Monday, September 13, 2010

Emphas.is wants to leverage the crowd:Times have been tough for photojournalists. A new startup launching this winter hopes it has come up with a way to solve some of the field’s financial problems, while giving world-class photojournalists a new level of freedom in telling stories.Emphas.is, will be a platform that looks to the crowd to fund photographers’ work in dangerous places around the world. Similar to other crowdfunding sites, photojournalists will post trip pitches with a fundraising goal. Photographers will be free to distribute photographs and videos as they please - Emphas.is will not own the photographs.Founder Khelifa is rounding up endorsements from top photo editors and directors at outlets like Time and agencies like the VII and Magnum. For now, Khelifa has raised his own startup funding from a number angel investors. He hopes to see the site go live in January 2011.The Nieman Journalism Lab (abbreviated).Related:•Can Emphas.is bring crowd funding to photojournalism? (Editors Weblog)

Sunday, May 10, 2009

FreelensPetition:Many Magnum photographers have signed the petition against the Jahreszeiten publishing house and its contract conditions, meanwhile overall more than 2,800 photographers, photojournalists and other professionals.Check it out here.

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Nowadays, most discussions on photography focus on the birth of some new microstock agency where pictures will be sold for a few cents or the closing of one of the new initiatives started to make money easily.

There are a few exceptions, but certainly there is no interest in promoting photography. Analysts have overlooked though that all those agencies that had gone public, they have now either gone bankrupt or have chosen to become private again. This is the case of A21, Getty Images and Jupiterimages.

What does all this mean? Probably, it just means that this option isn't viable and that no other agency will choose to go public. I have no idea how many investors have lost money, but I do believe there are quite a few such people.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Anthony Suau, USA, for Time.
US Economy in Crisis: Following eviction, Detective Robert Kole must ensure residents
have moved out of their home, Cleveland, Ohio, 26 March.

Jury chair MaryAnne Golon said: "The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It's a double entendre. It looks like a classic conflict photograph, but it is simply the eviction of people from a house following foreclosure. Now war in its classic sense is coming into people's houses because they can't pay their mortgages."

Saturday, August 02, 2008

20th Visa pour l' Image photojournalism festival 2008 in Perpignan:
If you intend to travel to Perpignan this year ... here´s the full festival brochure (PDF download) with all details about the exhibitions, the evening shows, the special features, the awards, the symposium and other activities.

Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt pix for $14 mil, most expensive celeb fotos ever:Exclusive photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie´s newborn twins
fetched $14 million, a person involved in the negotiations told The
Associated Press, giving People magazine and London-based Hello!
magazine joint rights to publish the most expensive celebrity pictures
ever sold.
The person asked not to be named because he was not authorized to
release the figure.The couple ultimately chose to go a familiar route with its
joint deal between People and Hello!, with Getty Images as the
photographer and go-between. Getty CEO Jonathan Klein
said his company was "delighted that all proceeds from these stunning
images will once again be donated entirely to charity."
AP story, more details here.Related: Brangelina baby pics bring excitement, yawns (Reuters)

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Photojournalism for the Web Generation:"Exactly upside down" is how Brian Storm, 37, describes the business model that guides the making, selling and viewing of photojournalism.How have they turned photojournalism upside down? Old LIFE stories began with an idea, and editors would assign photographers to produce pictures and a writer to produce text to fit that concept.MediaStorm producers start with the photographs.Using one client as an example, Mr. Storm talks about the benefits of MediaStorm´s workshops for writers, photographers and other media professionals. "The L.A. Times is no longer a newspaper trying to make a Web site work. It is a multimedia production company with great resources."
MediaStorm, he says, "is a purpose-driven organization. I want to make photojournalism work by sharing the secrets other journalists knew, the backstories, the context for the images that made it to print. The problem isn´t bad pictures. The best stuff got left out because in the days of print we couldn´t use it. Photojournalism can make people care about the world if we learn to stop and take the time to tell a good story. Quality rules."WSJ/Mary Panzer (compiled).

Friday, September 28, 2007

Now on YouTube since a few hours: for his award-winning film War Photographer, Christian Frei followed James Nachtwey for two years into the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, Palestine... . He used special micro-cameras attached to James Nachtwey´s camera.

10 videos, each around 10 minutes long. Below is Part I. Full DVD here.

Friday, August 17, 2007

You can now access and play instantly the best and most significant user generated videos with images from Getty Images Footage, Corbis and Flickr here on this separate page. From joy over love to pain, from enthusiasm over melancholy and gloom to death: the images, the videos and the music cover nearly all aspects of our life. (video below with Flickr images)

Following two earlier posts (see related stories) how non-user-generated content appears remixed on YouTube as a vehicle to tell about your life, your thoughts and emotions, here is another visual narration by Kwapi T. Vengesayi on YouTube about Bleeding Africa with images from Corbis and their photographers.This time it is not appropriate to post the original video and its content here in this context, so please simply click on the screenshot below or follow this link to YouTube.

More about Kwapi T. Vengesayi on his blog, his profile and on YouTube (the person which produced the video and uploaded it to YouTube in July 2007 seem to be identical).

Thursday, August 16, 2007

A visual narration in six chapters with images from Corbis and their photographers.5 minutes and 36 seconds. Take the time. It´s worth every second.

The photos speak for themselves: no fancy graphics to supplement the message.A non-partisan, heart warming tribute to the Zimbabwean people. Music by Gyptian - Photographs courtesy of www.corbis.com.Video produced by Kwapi T. Vengesayi - uploaded in April 2007.

Friday, June 22, 2007

The important man on this screenshot is Spencer Platt on the left: "Getty Images CEO and Co-Founder Jonathan Klein recently sat down with Getty Images photographer Spencer Platt to discuss what it is like living a life behind the lens." (Getty Images News Blog).

Simply click on the screenshot and you will be redirected to the MP4-file. Or click here.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

While the New York Times was so kind to enlighten us in the their recent report on Corbis that "the company uses its revenues to cover smaller projects within the firm", photojournalist Fady Adwan is out with a message about his new starting photo agency Palestinian Photo Stocks (website in beta), based in Gaza Strip, Palestine.

The independent agency is a photographic co-operative, owned by its photographer-members, and provides features and photo documentaries for palestinian and foreign newspapers and magazines with a "more visual, more suggestive, more attractive look and with a more stimulating type of content". More photos from PPS here.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

As a response to my earlier blog post "Two Worlds Apart" here, Paul Melcher, without citing my name, called me
a dinosaur in his blog entry "The Age of Dinosaurs". Since I think I´m right when I talk about and remember and regret the old
times, I don´t feel offended.

Citizen Journalism - one trend which would appear to suggest more "democracy" in the media - but actually doesn't - is a "smokescreen for grabbing content" (Sion´s blog) and "should be more accurately termed Audience Stolen Content"

"Copyright is already dead"

"Weakening investigative journalism has far more profound implications for democracy" (quoting the NY Review of Books)

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Both Time Magazine and American Photo have published in the last days news listing companies and people they think are Persons Of The Year and Innovators.

For a moment, let us put the visual world, captured through photography and footage, all into one box, and take into account the perspective of User-Generated Content, Social Networking or Social Media, Community and Crowdsourcing. Phrases which partly have become synonyms and unfortunately buzzwords. Here is my personal list -- micropayment stock photo companies are intentionally not included -- with the real heroes in the visual world of the year 2006 and the upcoming year 2007, alphabetically:

At first sight, in the context of his entire blog post some of his conclusions ("The photojournalist’s job may be history before long, but photojournalism has never been more important, or more widespread") and remarks ("some of the professional paparazzi are submitting photos this way [as citizen journalists for Bild, "the trashy German tabloid"],
because they can make more money than through traditional dealings with
the newspaper") seem to be quite brilliant.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

On Sunday the Wall Street Journal published the article "A Photo's Hidden History" in the weekend edition on the iranian photographer Jahangir RazmiI, quoted here. Razmil´s photo of an execution in Iran won the Pulitzer Price 26 years ago, but it was awarded to an unnamed photographer, the only
anonymous recipient in the 90-year history of the award.

Monday, October 02, 2006

An update on Anarchy Images, the recently in July by Jason Pagan founded story-based photojournalism agency for deep photographic coverage on international social and political
issues, based in NYC and powered by PhotoShelter:

A note from Michael Hirschler/German Association of Journalists (DJV), responsible amongst others for the freelance journalists and photojournalists of this association:

On July 11th, 2006, the newspaper Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten did not publish
a photo of the Robbie Williams concert held in Dresden on July 10th, 2006,
but left an empty spot next to an article dealing with the concert.
It also added a statement:

"On this place we wanted to print a picture
of the Robbie Williams´concert. But we had to refuse to do so. The singer´s
management wanted to constrain the photopraphers´ work by an adhesion
contract which is unacceptable to us. The local chapter of the German Association of Journalist
in Saxony called the restrictions a "flagrant example of an immoral contract" and appealed for a photo boycott. The
Dresdner Neue Nachrichten follows to this appeal and will only publish a review in the edition of
July 12, 2006."